Saturday, Feb. 12, 2005

PERSONALITY PROFILE

By VIVIENNE KENRICK

Hope and Homes for Children is a young international charity. It aims to provide families and future for children orphaned by war, disaster or AIDS.

On the coast near cape town, Alastair Humphreys savors the moment before scything open a bottle of Pierre Jourdan champagne with a pocketknife. By the time he reached Tokyo, Alastair had covered 54,000 km across 46 countries. Now he only has to pedal across Asia and Europe.

In August 2001, when he was 24, Alastair Humphreys left England. He had two motivations. He wanted to help HHC and he wanted to undertake an adventurous cycling trip. He put the two together.

Currently Alastair is cycling through Japan. He is on his own all the way, and supporting his own journeying. He is grateful for personal help he has received, especially with equipment, having worn out -- so far -- three bicycles and bits of bicycles on the road. He gives interviews and talks and presents slide-shows in his efforts to publicize HHC, and solicits sponsorships and donations for the charity. Carrying his own camping kit and necessities, he crossed Africa on $ 1 a day, South America on $ 2 a day and North America on $ 3 a day.

Alastair said: "In England I read a lot of books about trips to Mount Everest and to the South Pole and remote places. They were exciting. I decided to do this trip." Between school and university he had taken a gap year teaching in a South African homeland school. He returned to work for his degree in zoology at the University of Edinburgh. He went on to a postgraduate teaching course at Oxford University, thinking, "I might like to teach sometime in my life. A few months later, I began this. I didn't get sponsorship, and had no financial help before I left. I had saved."

His parents in Yorkshire, and his brother, a sky-diving instructor in Oxford, encouraged him. At the time, Alastair was only an average cyclist. "I had no time to train. I was really unfit. The first few days were very painful," he said. Having had the good sense to make sure of his education before he began, once on the way he depended on his good sense and sound spirit.

When he set out, his original intention was to cycle from the U.K. to Sydney, Australia. He was still pedaling in Europe when, less than three weeks after he left, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, made him decide to abandon his planned route. Instead, from the Middle East he turned toward Africa.

In temperatures of 45 C, pushing his cycle through deep sand, Alastair crossed Sudan. The frame of his cycle snapped. In Ethiopia he experienced activities and levels of life he had not seen before. "Emotionally that was the hardest month of the journey," he said. Extremely lonely, realizing he had only himself to rely on, he faced the effects of famine in Malawi, the threat of land mines in Mozambique, civil unrest in Zimbabwe. After 14 months on the road, he reached Cape Town.

"I wanted to get to South America," Alastair said. "I made myself useful at the yacht club until I found someone with space on a yacht that was taking part in the Cape-to-Rio race across the Atlantic Ocean. I only had to be obedient and do as I was told. I could do that."

In South America, Alastair cycled through the harsh terrain of Patagonia, across the Atacama Desert -- the world's driest, where he needed to carry 18 liters of water -- past salt lakes in Bolivia and through mountain passes at high altitudes. After Colombia he found a yacht again to carry him through the Panama Canal and into Central America and Mexico. He cycled up the West Coast of the U.S. into Canada and Alaska, and worked his way on a cargo ship to Siberia. There he camped in temperatures of minus 40 C before crossing to Hokkaido. By the time he reached Tokyo, Alastair had covered 54,000 km. He has been in 46 countries, and taken 40 months to get so far.

In extremes of temperature, Alastair found heat easier to prepare for than cold. "In Russia," he said, "they leave the snow on the roads. It packs hard. In Hokkaido, where they remove the snow, the ice on the roads becomes lethal for a cyclist." His experiences overall have been positive. "On a bicycle you don't look rich," he said. "You look so vulnerable that people want to look after you. Now money is my only limit, not time. I don't want to rush."

From Japan he has to pedal across Asia and Europe, expecting to get back to England in the summer of 2006. He will have been gone the best part of five years. He doesn't know what he will return to, but hopes to get an illustrated book out of his round-the-world cycling.

Information and updates: Web site www.roundtheworldbybike.com , e-mail roundtheworldbybike@hotmail.com

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